I grew up in South Florida with a German Mother and an African-American Father. I never really knew that my family was any different than anyone else’s family… until the world told me. When they did, when I was a child, it was often unkind. A teacher of mine, at some point, told me the story about the Lovings in Loving v. State of Virginia and how two brave, young volunteer attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union took the criminal convictions of the Richard and Mildred Loving, after the interracial couple having committed the crime of simply loving one another despite their differences, to the Supreme Court and had bans on interracial marriage declared unconstitutional. Had it not been for those ACLU attorneys, Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, who took on this case, I may not have existed at all, as it shaped our laws and our culture toward acceptance of interracial unions. In realizing that two young eager attorneys made my very existence a possibility, I knew that I wanted to be a part of change in this country as we grow and become more open to ideologies once forbidden. To date, a picture of the Lovings hangs in my office, along with the quote originally written by Judge Bazile when asked to overturn the Lovings convictions : “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” Although it is an ugly quote, it is but a reminder to me of how far we’ve come, how much the law can change and how much power I, as an attorney, have in my hands to perfect that.
Anastasia J. Mahone, Esq.

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